Ymir - You Go Boom! (S8 Conquest Support)

Welcome to my first guide on SmiteFire. I've been playing SMITE since the beta and have wracked up around 2.5k hours in it by now. I play a wide variety of characters but have always been a support main, and many of my builds will reflect that.

Ymir is the second god I ever got to diamond rank and my second most played character in total. I've seen around ninety god's added to the game since I first picked up Ymir and have watched him surge to the forefront of metas before falling deep to the wayside just as quickly. If you want to play Ymir, hopefully this guide will give you an idea as to how.

Ymir is not what I would call a traditional support choice. He has his strengths and his weaknesses like any other guardian, but with some additional ups and downs that a new Ymir player absolutely must be aware of.

Let's start with his supporting style, which can be summed up in one word: aggressive. Ymir wants to be in your face, he wants to freeze you, whack you, take your lunch money, and then ult you. His base damage is higher than most other guardians and Shards of Ice has surprisingly high damage scaling for his role (a whopping 150%). He has solid crowd control and damage, he's tanky and nearly all of his abilities apply a slow and a debuff (see Frostbite), and his Ice Wall is a death sentence to characters who can't get through it. He can be incredibly fun to play and really make you feel like you're leading your team from the front.

Unfortunately, Ymir comes with some drawbacks. While his damage output is high, he needs to be keeping up in levels to get that increased base damage on his abilities, and without any sort of movement ability he can struggle to initiate effectively on an enemy team. His CC is potent but will likely only hit a maximum of two enemies per use of Frost Breath, and his ult takes three seconds to channel the full damage. These may not seem like terrible downsides, but combining Ymir's flaws means that he is nearly useless from behind. An Athena can fall behind three levels and still be effective, but an Ymir who falls behind three levels does too little damage, too little CC, and has no way to run from an enemy team.

In summary, Ymir is feast or famine. He can get ahead and deal high damage alongside a long stun, or he can fall behind and do little damage before inevitably getting blown up. This god rarely has an in-between game, but how good he feels from ahead can make up for how bad he feels from behind.

If you're looking for early damage, Glacial Strike is your best bet for putting an enemy into the ground. It does good damage, slows enemies, and is on a low cooldown so hitting an enemy with it can really throw a wrench into their early game. Maxing it out means more damage, simple as that.

Frost Breath can be maxed out first, depending on who your teammates are. The duration of the freeze gets longer with each level put into it (to a hefty 2.25 seconds), so maxing it out early can ensure some easy setup. If you have someone like a Cupid or an Anhur with you in lane, consider maxing this out first to provide solid setup at the expense of a little damage.

Ice Wall can also be maxed out first in certain situations. For each level put into it, it gains 1 second to it's duration and loses 1 second on it's cooldown, making it an effective lockdown and escape-preventing tool. If the enemy team struggles to get over walls, it could be good to max this out first.

Finally, Shards of Ice. How you level this ability can really depend on the state of the game or your team composition. It does solid damage, makes Ymir CC immune for the duration, and slows down all nearby enemies. Unfortunately, it is incredibly well telegraphed and hard to actually land it's max damage. If the enemy team has a hard time dealing with slows or your team has lots of lockdown and CC, Shards of Ice can be leveled as soon as possible to get the higher damage numbers. Otherwise, consider leveling it up at 5 and then ignoring it until late game in favor of your other abilities.

All in all, take a look at what you and your team needs come level 5. If they need damage and pressure, max out Glacial Strike. If they need CC, max out Frost Breath. If they need to prevent enemy escapes and disrupt the flow of battle, max out Ice Wall.